Naysayers on China are wrong, I think. Americans and American investors should pay close attention to China and learn. Continued Chinese growth means that the supercyclein commodities, prematurely declared dead by so many, will continue.

By the end of 2013, I expect the long-term commodities uptrend to reassert itself. If America does not learn from China, in fact, commodities may be investors’ only potential source of outsized gains.

As I wrote in my book Red Alert, most disbelief concerning China’s growth prospects stems from differences between Eastern and Western mindsets. I cite many clinical psychological studies to distinguish East from West. The findings do not distinguish I.Q. but rather differences in cultural worldviews. The West focuses on the center of action. Our eyes naturally gravitate toward the center of a photograph or picture. In the East, the periphery holds much more significance.

This distinction, an action oriented approach as opposed to a broad perspective, explains a lot. The West tends to ask, “What have you done for me lately,” or to advise that people strike while the iron is hot. Eastern sages typically caution against action until all potential consequences may be fully appreciated. The entire message of one old Chinese parable, for example, roughly translates as “wait and see.”

China’s latest naysayer, Nobel economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, recently argued that China is headed for a terrible fall. He sees China as vastly overbuilt, and facing a massive credit crisis. Moreover, he notes, China can no longer count on cheap labor to continue to drive growth at the rapid levels seen historically. Krugman thinks China’s growth engines have run out gas and its jet plane will experience a crash. His “only question is how bad the crash will be.”

Back in 1994, Krugman similarly assessed the Singapore economy. “…Singapore is an economic twin of the growth of Stalin’s Soviet Union,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs (November/December, The Myth of Asia’s Miracle). In 1994, remember, the Soviet Union shone chiefly as a massively failed economic experiment. Krugman simultaneously offered duplicate reasoning on the other fast growing Asian economies, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. The Krugman argument, nearly a generation ago, on the Asian Tigers closely parallels his current reasoning on China. They had expended or were on the verge of consuming their entire available capital and labor resources, he contended, and lacked any signs of future productivity improvement. He wrote that they had already achieved most of their potential, and for Singapore, he wondered only how fast it would fall.

Of course, things did not work out that way. Singapore and the other Asian nations have since grown voluminously. By virtually every measure of well-being, in fact, from life expectancy to per capita GDP, Singapore now surpasses America.

Krugman was not alone in dismissing future East Asian economic potential, but was certainly one of the brightest. He mistakenly assumed that Western analysis would correctly assess Eastern settings. Singapore in 1994, like China today, had experienced an extraordinary run of rapid growth. Its economy had increased more than seven fold in under 25 years, fired by ever greater labor and capital pools. What Krugman and many others missed was the foundation for much higher productivity, and indeed Singapore has since proven second to none in leveraging the advantages of modern technology.

China today, likewise, houses many productivity drivers. Urbanization promises their populace greater education. It should also strongly drive up productivity and efficiency, as will the vast majority of Chinese infrastructure spending, including that in so-called ghost cities, a topic I discussed in a prior Forbes blog. Here rests the bedrock for future growth in Chinese efficiency and productivity. Sure, China has invested in some boondoggles, but far fewer than the press would have us believe.

America can learn from China’s infrastructure spending, especially that on its high speed trains, highways, and waterways. Transportation and other infrastructure are critical to constructing a 21st century energy platform. China excels in virtually every type of renewable energy and smart-grid spending.

Its developing smart grid enables simultaneous use of different energy sources. In other words, China has set the stage to vastly increase its internal energy productivity. As I stated in another previous blog, fracking amounts to a terribly inefficient energy source. Renewable sources, by contrast, especially those connected to a smart grid, look far more efficient. If we don’t want China to race ahead of us in 10 or 15 years, we should emulate them, now.

China’s will rapidly spend on infrastructure for at least the next decade and that will in turn benefit commodities prices. Our favorite plays in this regard are the following ETFs: Powershares DB Base Metals Fund (DBB) represents the most liquid road to prospective gains in industrial metals, including copper, zinc and aluminum. Another moderately liquid security, iPath Dow Jones UBS Copper Total Return Sub Index (JJC), technically an exchange traded note (ETN), focuses on a particular industrial metal, copper, and faithfully follows its price.

Those wanting to invest in precious metals should turn to the two most liquid ETFs of that type, SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) for gold, and iShares Silver Trust (SLV) for Silver. However, when gold breaks through some important resistance, the changes in the psychological dynamic will lead to outsized gains, gold miners and especially junior gold miners will start to outperform all commodities and everything else as well. In that category, the most leveraged ETF is Junior Gold Miners (GDXJ). Its investors will need patience, but I expect that to be rewarded in spades. We will keep you posted in future blogs.